March 23, 1901, General Aguinaldo was captured by the Americans
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On March 23, 1901, General Emilio Aguinaldo was captured by the American forces led by General Frederick Funston with the help of Macabebe Scouts, in Palanan, Isabela.
Earlier on February 8, 1901, 6 tired guerillas led by Cecilio Segismundo, an Ilocano and Aguinaldo's trusted messenger who carried important dispatches, surrendered to the Americans. Some of the dispatches Segismundo was carrying were coded and signed with "Pastor" and "Colon de Magdalo", pseudonyms often used by General Aguinaldo. In addition, Segismundo revealed that Aguinaldo had no more than fifty guards in the village and pinpointed Aguinaldo's headquarters as the vilage of Palanan in the mountainous Isabela province in northeastern Luzon, near the Pacific Coast.
Funston aides with the help of Lazaro Segovia deciphered the messages. Most important of the messages was an order to General Baldomero Aguinaldo instructing him to send some troops to Palanan. Segovia was a former Spanish army officer who had defected to the Philippine army and then switched allegiance to the American side. Segovia understood English, Spanish, and the Tagalog dialect.
With this information in hand, Funston and his staff began to formulate a plan for Aguinaldo's capture.
Funston disguised the Macabebes and sent them to Palanan, posing as the men Aquinaldo had requested. Funston and four other American officers, disguised as prisoners of war, accompanied the column. 78 handpicked Macabebes were members of Company D, First Battalion, Macabebe Scouts and spoke Tagalog in addition to their dialect. They turned in their Springfields and were issued 50 Mausers, 18 Remingtons and 10 Krag-Jorgensens, which were the types of rifles used by Aguinaldo's soldiers. Twenty of them wore the rayadillo uniform of the Philippine army.
The Macabebes are a certain tribal clan, natives of Macabebe, Pamapanga, who look no different from all other Filipinos, but who had, under the Spanish government, by reason of long-standing feuds with their more rebellious neighbors, came to be absolutely loyal to the Spanish authorities. When the Americans came they had transferred that loyalty to them and had become a recognized and valuable part of American military force. The American government, jubilant over Aguinaldo's capture, authorized the formal inclusion of the Macabebes into the Philippine Scouts, a special unit of the US Army.
In addition to Segismundo, Funston included in the column Hilario Tal Placido, Lazaro Segovia, Dionisio Bato, and Gregorio Cadhit. Hilario Tal Placido had been a Lieutenant Colonel in the Philippine army and knew Aquinaldo personally.
Some months previously, Funston had captured General Urbano Lacuna's seal and official signed correspondence. From this material, two letters were forged—supposedly from Lacuna to Aguinaldo. One letter contained information as to the progress of the war. The other stated that in accordance with instructions from General Baldomero Aguinaldo, he was sending 80 men to Palanan under the command of Placido, Segovia, and Segismundo.
Accordingly, Funston fear that the whole Filipino people were a "secret service" ready to warn Aguinaldo, should the carefully concocted ruse be discovered anywhere along the journey. So they sailed through the USS Vicksburg, making it appear that it was an ordinary command, went down to the southern end of Luzon, and through the San Bernardino Straits into the Pacific Ocean, and thence up the east coast of Luzon to Casiguran Bay, about 100 miles south of Palanan, landing at Casiguran Bay, March 14th. With the ship's lights screened to avoid detection, the Vicksburg at once departing out of sight of land, and agreeing to meet them off Palanan, their destination, on March 25th, eleven days later.
Finally Funston reached Palanan on the 23rd, the "prisoners" quite far in the rear. Placido got safely into Aguinaldo's presence, followed at a short distance by the main body of his Macabebes. Aguinaldo's life-guard of some fifty men, neatly uniformed, presented arms as Placido entered the insurgent headquarters, and thereafter waited at attention outside. Then the worthy Placido entertained Aguinaldo with a few cock-and-bull stories about the march across country, etc., made obediently to the President's order, keeping a weather eye out of the window all the time.
Meanwhile, the day earlier, March 22, was Aguinaldo's birthday, his headquarters was still adorned with garlands from the previous day's celebration.
As soon as the Macabebes had come up and formed facing the Aguinaldo life-guard, Placido went to the window and ordered them to open fire. This they did, killing two of the insurgents and wounding their commanding officer, Colonel Simeon Villa. The rest fled, panic-stricken, by reason of the surprise. Then Placido, a very stout individual, grabbed Aguinaldo, who only weighs about 115 pounds, threw him down, and sat on him, until General Funston came.
General Emilio Aguinaldo, the first President of the Philippines was captured.
On the morning of March 25, Aguinaldo and three of his men were marched to the seashore at Palanan Bay, arriving there at noon. The Americans made two signal fires and hoisted a white flag. A little later, a steamer rose on the horizon. Within two hours the Vicksburg was anchored near the beach.
During the trip, Aguinaldo admitted to Funston that he had been completely fooled by the phony dispatches. He later confided that he could
and that he was gripped by a
"feeling of disgust and despair for I had failed my people and my motherland".
In due course the Vicksburg arrived Manila Bay without the knowledge of a single soul in greater Manila. Aguinaldo was presented to General Arthur C. MacArthur, Jr. as a prisoner of war but was most graciously treated by the General as distinguished soldier's "guest" at the Malacañang palace from March 28th until April 20th.
In his annual report for 1901, General MacArthur described the capture of Aguinaldo as:
"the most momentous single event of the year. Aguinaldo was the incarnation of the insurrection".
The General thought so much of him that he considered him worth many hundred times his weight in gold, and had him watched night and day by a commissioned officer.
Aguinaldo complimented his captors:
"At all times since our capture, as well in Palanan as on board the Vicksburg, we have been treated with the highest consideration by our captors, as well as by all the other American officers with whom we have come in contact."
Everything that had been done by the Americans since November, 1899, was explained to Aguinaldo, and he was made to see that the American purposes with regard to his people were not only benevolent but also inflexible, that there was no altering the American determination to make his people happy whether they were willing or not. Seeing this, Aguinaldo bowed to the inevitable.
Aguinaldo took the oath of allegiance to the American Government and on April 1, 1901 issued a proclamation recommending abandonment of further resistance.
Source:
- The American Occupation of the Philippines 1898-1912, James Blunt, GP Putnam Sons, 1913
- Philippine-American War, 1899-1902, Arnaldo Dumindin
"hardly believe myself to be a prisoner"